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Snowboarders Get 'Insane' Ride – Dangling From A Helicopter

A father and son say they were "insanely excited" about being rescued from a stalled gondola by helicopter at a ski resort in Canada on Sunday.
Screengrab by NPR
A father and son say they were "insanely excited" about being rescued from a stalled gondola by helicopter at a ski resort in Canada on Sunday.

When your gondola gets stuck in midair at a ski resort with one of the highest vertical drops on the continent, you'd be forgiven for having pangs of fear or even panic. For teenager Kody Lapointe and his dad, it was a chance to take an "insane ride" on a rope suspended from a helicopter — and to videotape the event.

After the ride was over, Lapointe posted the video — and thanked the local authorities for a "kickass ride." (We warn you, it seems to include a shouted profanity around the 1:40 mark.)

That ride was part of a rescue operation Sunday at the Kicking Horse Mountain Resort in British Columbia, where a power outage froze the gondola lift. A video of the rescue posted by Lapointe shows an emergency worker landing in their gondola car, hooking father and son up to harnesses — and sending them out the door with a simple "goodbye."

Lapointe tells the CBC that he and his dad were "insanely excited" after they realized that they would be hitching a ride on a helicopter.

The CBC says that after the power outage hit, "approximately 75 people were taken to safety."

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Bill Chappell is a writer and editor on the News Desk in the heart of NPR's newsroom in Washington, D.C.